We run public and private courses on each of these subjects in Melksham, Wiltshire, England. We can also run private courses at your offices. We concentrate on providing high quality courses at a good price in specialist subjects.

Since most of the subjects we teach are 'niche', delegates on public courses travel from far and wide to Melksham for their courses. Our training centre, Well House Manor, is purpose fitted for our classes, and also provides hotel accommodation for our customers and for other visitors to the Melksham area who require large en-suite rooms, internet access throughout their stay, and a quiet environment to work, study and relax in the evening.

We write our own notes, present our own courses, and our staff keep their knowledge up to date by undertaking contract work and attending courses and conferences themselves as part of their jobs.

A POTTED HISTORY

Well House Consultants was founded in 1995 to provide contract high tech trainers, initially concentrating on Sun's Solaris operating system. We were early adopters of the Internet, and with the coming of the Web we branched out and started to provide courses covering Java, Perl, and HTML -- technologies we ourselves had rapidly become familiar with as we made practical use of them in our own (and our customer's) businesses.

Since January, 1999, we've concentrated on the Open Source training and contracting aspects of our business. In summer, 1999, we purchased a Georgian property which we restored as our training centre. A few courses have been running here since January 2000, and from September 2000 we transferred our public courses to our new facility.

2001 saw us go from strength to strength, with a full schedule of public, private and on-site courses - in Perl, Java, Tcl/Tk, PHP and MySQL. Our "Of Course" newsletter, keeping readers abreast of the latest developments in open source languages, was launched, and we applied for (and obtained) planning permission that allowed us to improve and expand our services within our current building in 2002.

2003 and 2004 saw us providing further improved facilities at our training centre with a new customer lounge, still higher speed internet access, new training room furniture, projection systems, trainee's laptops and servers. In 2005, we've continued to update facilities, training note and equipment and provide even better training - so much so that we seem to be busy even when anyone who might be regarded as a competitor is quiet. Courses added in recent years include Python, Linux and C / C++, and we've dropped Java programming courses as that requirement has moved from a niche that we can specialise in to more of a mass market requirement.

In 2005, we continued to grow ... and from October 2006 we provided course, and business accommodation too, from "Well House Manor" - an Edwardian Hotel set in 3/4 of an acre of grounds just 5 minutes from Melksham town centre. This hasn't been a quick move; refurbishing a sound but tired old building up to modern business hotel standards - from replacing the entire heating system to providing wireless internet throughout, from rewiring to providing state-of-the-art security does take time, but we believe you'll find it worth the effort.

2007 was a year of quiet consoldiation - even through the refurbishment of
Well House Manor, we maintained our courses and our course quality so that
we're getting yet more referrals through ... and,already, returning guests at
"The Manor". If you're an old friend, we look forward to seeing you again and if you're new to Well House Consultants, we look forward to meeting you in the future.
We'll continue to provide top quality hotel rooms and
training in Open Source languages and related subjects, updating our course notes and facilities frequently and keeping in touch with our customers through this web site, our "Of Course" newsletter and our opentalk forum.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT US

Both Lisa and Graham Ellis, the principals of Well House Consultants, have an enthusiasm for their work and are dedicated to provide you with the correct product to meet your needs. We encourage you to phone us and discuss your requirements; not just to book on a standard course, we want to "wow" you with the quality of our service. This approach serves us well. The majority of our customers reach us through referrals and our advertising costs are minimal. All of which means that our product is very keenly priced.

As you look around this web site, you'll find details of Public Courses and Specially Run Courses which we can run for you at our training centre. We'll also come to your offices, bringing all necessary equipment to run your own Private Courses. A listing and schedule of public courses is also available, from which you can link on to individual course details. If you prefer, our home page includes a course selector that helps you find a course on the correct topic, and at the correct level

We take great care to avoid our trainers and notes getting "rusty". About a third of our work is in Contract Services, where we offer our trainers short contracts in the disciplines in which we teach, and where we provide web site design, maintenance and support services. Notes are updated very frequently; manuals are tailored and printed separately for each course.

Finally, we couldn't do it all without our staff, all of whom we're delighted to have on the team. It's the people as well as the infrastructure that make a company, and we're lucky to be well endowed on both fronts.

Please phone, email, or fax us if you would like further details. Our online Information Request form lets you ask for a general brochure, an emailed catalogue, or other information.

"Of Course" -- pdf download of current issue
Our bi-annual 24-page newsletter is a publication we give out to our students to keep them in touch with what we're doing, as well as what the open source industry is doing. Past issues also available.